Itís been so long since Iíve sat down and drawn a bona fide fantasy creature! I used to draw dragons and griffins and all sorts of mythical creatures all the time when I was in high school. But when I got to college, I was finally forced into drawing real people, so all of my magical critters went away for a whileÖ

Anyway, since Iím attending DragonCon this year, I decided it was appropriate to finally draw some dragon art again! I forgot how much complicated history I had made up in my head over the years for dragons. I blame it on my love of Medieval Bestiaries, which I was obsessed with reading when I was a teen (to the point where I even made up my own manuscripts)! I donít know if it shows, but I can assure you, there is a lot more to this dragon than his snarky grin....

Thereís also another inspiration to this piece- a Mucha poster to which all of my work is continuously compared. I'm not sure why exactly, as I haven't drawn anything until this that remotely resembles the piece (and even this one is a stretch comparison, in my opinion). I wonder if itís something anyone will get? Itís our little secret if you do.

You're the very first person I Watched on dA and yet I saw this only in Art Nouveau! So I went and checked my watch list and somehow you had disappeared. I thought you'd just stopped posting here! Arggh..

Anwayway- wow, that is a fantastic dragon! And has also helped me re-find one of my favorite artists. Go dragon! But it's the coins here that boggle me. That must have taken ages!:[_____]

Hehe, it looks like a Mucha-y version of Smaug from The Hobbit, with all that gold he's hoarding.Great job on the scales, you get a sense of a realistic bird-reptile fusion. Which makes sense since birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Great to see I'm not the only one XDD I loved drawing dragons at highschool too. Good old days... And I really want to draw dragons and other mythical creatures again, your piece makes me want to draw even more. Great colors and composition

This is beautiful!!! Omg this looks like it took a long time to draw but it looks AMAZING! It's so detailed!! I love the little details in the dragon and I love what you did with the smoke coming out of the dragon's nose making it overlap with the those vertical line things!!

Oh gosh...thanks! All the little details took me so long to do! I didn't realize how much energy it was going to take to color all of the coins and scales until I started. Needless to say, it's going to be a long while before I can look a gold coins the same way again. XD

The thing I like most is how completely different it is from how I imagined it was going to be colored ~ it's so completely the opposite of my imagining. (I guess I imagined purply night colors with fire sparks.)

<3 I love this, and actually it takes Horo's place as being my new favorite Amanda piece.

Now I'm really curious about all the backstory you've created for dragons. oAo

It's so funny how we can look at the same layout and see completely different colors! I was thinking red and orange from the get-go because even from the first sketch, I saw him as a fire dragon! XD

As for the backstory...well, it's really too long to go into on here, but, in short, I've always thought of dragons as being related to birds (or at least, big prehistoric birds). The idea of feathers and all dragons having very bird-like personalities (or at least, in the way they express emotions) has always appealed to me. I've also always imagined they're somehow related to phoenix, or maybe all fire birds are descended from them in some way. The specifics go on and on, really. I've probably thought about it way too much over the years. XD

New picture! It looks like it should be a flier to a Jim henson movie! <3Reminds me of labyrinth, I hope you've heard of it! it is a very awesome movie. Love the costumes in it! Oh listen to me chatter. ;//;Wonderful picture Amanda!

Eeee!!! Thanks! I've been busy working on this since Otakon and San Japan ended! Oh gosh, and I'm such a huge fan of Jim Henson's fantasy designs! I'd be lying if I said that some of his critters didn't inspire me in some way!